Will Trump’s health care executive orders have an impact?

Paige Winfield Cunningham: Right. Well, this is really clearly an effort by Trump six weeks…

Will Trump’s health care executive orders have an impact?

Paige Winfield Cunningham:

Right.

Well, this is really clearly an effort by Trump six weeks before the election to try to look like he is on sort of the winning side of this issue.

But there’s a lot of dispute over whether he can even legally use the executive authority, use an executive order to extend these protections, and almost certainly this would be challenged in court. A lot of people are questioning this already.

And of course, the Affordable Care Act, passed in 2010, pioneered this, was the first — was legislation that extended these protections to Americans. And the administration has refused to defend that law, and the case will be heard by the Supreme Court, of course, on November 10.

And it’s really been remarkable, I would say, last year and this year, especially, as you have seen President Trump and Republicans try to completely rewrite the record on who has been in favor of these protections.

It plays really, really well with voters, and Democrats have successfully leveraged it against Republicans in the 2018 elections. And so there’s this very blatant attempt by Trump to make it look as he has sort of been a champion of this all along, even though, behind the scenes, he’s done a lot of things to actually undermine those very protections.